[vasillalov]

Alright folks,

My COBB AccessPort unit came in on Friday and since then I've put about 200 miles of mixed traffic on the car. So I wanted to do a mini review of my transition from GIAC to COBB. This should also serve as a comparison between their respective Stage 1 flashes. Here is a side by side comparison between GIAC and COBB in regards to different aspects of the user experience. In both cases 93 octane maps were compared!

INSTALLATION:

Currently, the only way you can get GIAC installed on your ECU is either to visit a local GIAC dealer nearby and have them reflash your car, or to remove the ECU from your car and send it to them. As you can imagine, this is very inconvenient for people with busy schedules (like me) or for people who live far from a nearby GIAC dealer. In my opinion, this is currently the biggest disadvantage for GIAC and the reason why I switched from GIAC to COBB.

Furthermore, if your ECU gets reflashed by BMW, you will have to repeat this process again. You will need to send your ECU to GIAC or visit a GIAC dealer. It gets even worse: Sometimes the GIAC dealership is not able to obtain a dump file off your ECU. This means that you will have to send your ECU to GIAC for reflashing. It happened to me after BMW updated my ECU to ISTA 2.40.2. This is a BIG BIG inconvenience!

I had my GIAC S1 installed by Rich @ dubwerks, a well known VW/AUDI tuning shop in Chicago. My experience with dubwerks has always been flawless. All of the dubwerks guys are gearheads just like us and they will treat anyone with respect and provide quality service. It took about 45 minutes for the GIAC flash to be installed onto my car. This is significantly slower than COBB.

On the other hand COBB installation was simple. After installing firmware upgrade to the AP unit, it took about 10-15 minutes for the install. The installation process seems to be very well designed as well as the COBB unit performs CRC checks before and after the installation and verifies that there is no data corruption! The interface is intuitive and it does not take long to get intimately familiar with it. In my opinion, this is currently the biggest advantage of COBB: ease and simplicity of the installation.

Installation Summary: COBB wins!


MAP SWITCHING:

GIAC Map switching requires a hand held map switcher. As demonstrated by Mr.5's video, map switching is instantaneous and can be done while driving the car and the engine is running (although not recommended for safety reasons). As a disadvantage, users must purchase separate maps and the handheld switcher.

Cobb on the other hand takes 1-2 minutes to load a new map. This means that you can't do this while you are driving and the engine is running. Slight inconvenience, and not a big deal overall, considering that all the maps are free and the user does not need to purchase anything additionally.

Overall, I think COBB wins with a slight advantage over GIAC, simply because there are no additional costs for the extra maps.

DRIVEABILITY:

I understand that perhaps this is the most subjective portion of the review. Please, take this with a grain of salt.

While cruising and low loads (mostly under 3000 rpms), the COBB Stage 1 impressed me with the smooth power delivery and tremendous driveability. The car feels smoother and very very pleasant to be in. COBB Stage 1 definitely feels smoother and better than stock. I have a full catless exhaust system and the stock tune feels bit choppy and unrefined because the car is constantly overshooting its boost targets.

In my opinion, in low rpms and low loads, COBB is on par with GIAC S1. They both feel smoother and more pleasant compared to stock tune, and this is no surprise given my mods.

Things become very very different when I start romping on the gas pedal. GIAC S1 delivers smooth linear bump in power. Throttle response with GIAC S1 is fantastic. Boost management appears to be well managed. There is no surging, no "lumpiness", just straight linear increase in power all the way till redline. Part throttle responses with GIAC are simply flawless.

On the other hand, COBB is not nearly as good. After 3000 rpms, COBB just delivers one giant lump of torque and the car surges forward relentlessly! There is nothing linear and smooth about that. Furthermore, sometimes the car will seem to surge forward for extra 1-2 seconds even though I let off the gas pedal. This is very weird and it can be very scary when driving in the city. I am not sure why this is happening but I don't like it a single bit.

Driving at WOT is pretty much the same between GIAC and COBB. Both tunes perform similarly, with the only difference that COBB has a bit more boost compared to GIAC. So the COBB S1 fees a bit more stronger than GIAC S1.

Drivability Summary: GIAC Wins! Cobb has some serious work left to do to make the power delivery more linear and better controlled. I have no doubts that they will eventually catch up to GIAC and even surpass them once the ATP software is released. For now however, they are second best to GIAC!

[vasillalov]

Reserved for logs!

[dzenno]

Interesting review, cool!

[Alan l.]

I can relate to the surging of power with the Cobb. This didn't happen on the first maps but noticed it on the v201 maps.

[BobS]

Any dyno comparisons? Good write up. I hear you on the ease of installing the cobb.

I asked giac if they would come out with a similar way of handheld installing and they said their map/parameters are larger than cobbs and can't be loaded on a device like the ap.

I'm waiting for the cobb stg2, I can't wait to compare!

[vasillalov]

Originally Posted by Alan l.

I can relate to the surging of power with the Cobb. This didn't happen on the first maps but noticed it on the v201 maps.

I do have the latest maps which are v2.01. I certainly hope that things will get better as they have more time to work on the maps.

On the side note, I've been wondering if this random forward surge of the car can be due to excessive boost and then insufficient operation of the diverter valves?... Just a thought...

[marv85]

Having not tried GIAC I can't argue with you about the differences. But I felt my car was really smooth in terms of power delivery with COBB stage1. It is much faster but I don't get the lump power feeling you're referring to. But then as you mentioned this is subjective.
I dynoed my car today Stock vs COBB s1 and will post results soon (after I scan the paper)... it would be interesting to see logs or dynos from your comparison as well

[vasillalov]

Hey Alan, what is your ECU identifier? Mine is I8A0S. I wonder if it is specific to only certain ECUs.

[bulldog_yyc]

good review - ive never had the surging issue, are you MT or AT?

[Brey335i]

Originally Posted by vasillalov

I understand that perhaps this is the most subjective portion of the review. Please, take this with a grain of salt.

That kind of statement makes me take your review much more seriously. Thank you for the honesty

I think that was a fair review and very interesting. It would be great if you could update this if your feeling change when you get the newer maps from COBB or Stage II

[boom]

Originally Posted by BobS

I asked giac if they would come out with a similar way of handheld installing and they said their map/parameters are larger than cobbs and can't be loaded on a device like the ap.

I call bs. Storage capabilities of electronic devices these days are huge.

[vasillalov]

Originally Posted by turkish335

good review - ive never had the surging issue, are you MT or AT?

6MT.

[Brey335i]

Originally Posted by boom

I call bs. Storage capabilities of electronic devices these days are huge.

one consideration might not be the storage capacity of the device, but rather the time it would take to transfer that information to the car without a power source. I don't know... just guessing

[BobS]

Could be bs, just saying what they told me, ok back on topic.

Op, Maybe cobb can refine your map?

[tscdennab]

Cobb indeed has a tremendous advantage of convenience, but since I have GIAC Stage 2 I have never had any problem with the car (besides the $350 shipping costs when I had to re-flash because the dealer erased my flash). It just drives like stock, with alot more power. Never ever had an error code related to the tune. So smooth and linear, perfect.

BUT I have to admit that the reflash inconvenience is starting to become problematic. Can't have so much downtime and spent money. So Cobb is indeed a good alternative, I just hope they will sometime soon manage to get on par with GIAC as far as driveability. But remembering how GIAC Stage 2 took so long to be released, I think that Cobb will also need a long time to achieve stock-like driveability.

[CaptChaos]

Thanks for the comparison review!

[99three]

Nice review, although I think GIAC wins the map switching comparison. I'd love to get a stage2 review.

[Alan l.]

Originally Posted by vasillalov

Hey Alan, what is your ECU identifier? Mine is I8A0S. I wonder if it is specific to only certain ECUs.

I think this is what are referring to.... Mine says MSD81_0044CC0IJE0S_80 on the AP Manager. My car is also 6MT

With the V201 93 map if i give the car more than 50% throttle it feels as if the car is giving me full power for a few seconds and then ease off. You don't notice this if you have the pedal floored all the way through to redline because you are asking for max power but it is more noticeable when you are driving in the 50-80% range. I definitely did not notice this on the very first AP maps.

Alan

[vasillalov]

bump for those who missed this yesterday

[O HELLA BMW]

nice review! i cant wait to get my cobb ap this coming wednesday!!

[ModBargains.com]

Thanks for posting up the review Vasil and I'm glad to hear that you're overall happy with the COBB AP and hope that it's everything that I described it to be. I know that you're going to be even happier once the updated stage 1 maps and stage 2 tunes are released which can also be downloaded for free!

Originally Posted by O HELLA BMW

nice review! i cant wait to get my cobb ap this coming wednesday!!

Thanks again for the order on the COBB AP. I can't wait to hear your feedback on the tune as well

[Jeff@TopGearSolutions]

Yea I actually drove a Cobb car the other day and noticed that surge of boost out of nowhere right away.

Not really a big deal as its an easy fix but it would certainly not be good for a road racer coming out of turn to suddenly ramp up to 12-14 PSI out of nowhere LOL

I heard this a handful of times now so I'm sure Cobb caught wind of this and are probably looking for a happy medium in the near future of the OTS maps.